February 13, 2007

Stacy Schiff embraces Montaigne, a "disjointed, derivative" writer who is "a man for our times." There -- she notes -- are far too many books to read:

By one estimate, 27 novels are published every day in America. A new blog is created every second. We would appear to be in the midst of a full-blown epidemic of graphomania. Surely we have never read, or written, so many words a day. Yet increasingly we deal in atomized bits of information, the hors d’oeuvres of education. We read not in continuous narratives but by linkage, the movable type of the 21st century.

We proceed by linkage, indeed, but this one's a TimesSelect link, so you may not be able to go there. But there will always be some other page to flit to, as you ignore that pile of books, all those rectangular objects that made you think so highly of yourself when you handed over your credit card at Borders. Start a blog. Be like Montaigne:

Leave the book under discussion unopened before you. Then write about yourself.

But do read some little things on the web. You'll need some snacks to keep you going. Some bloggables. Here's the whole text of Montaigne's essays. Why not grab something in there and say how it makes you feel?

7 comments:

My book reading has gone down since blogs began, but I think my overall reading has gone way, way up. And now I'm...regressing? slightly as I note myself gravitating toward blogs with more pictures and fewer words. I used to enjoy long books, but now I think snapshots are where it's at. Yikes.

I am constantly reminded of Montaigne when I read blogs. My book reading has gone way down in the last 3 years. There is a lot of interesting information on the internet. However, I am curtailing my online activity because there is more concentration involved in reading from the printed page.

I actually originally modeled my blog on Montaigne's Essay's- I even titled my blog "Essays" at first, before I settled on the eventual permanent title. He has a very bloggy style for his day, only without the links.